Biography

Wendy Macdonald’s parents, sister and brother were born in Glasgow, Scotland. She was the first in her family born in the United States, and later moved to Scotland with her mother for a period of time.

Wendy was interested in art at an early age. Her older brother took some art classes and that may have sparked some of her interest since she always wanted to be able to do what he was doing, even though he is ten years older. Since she was passionate about horses, she used his Walter Foster drawing books to help her draw horses “better”.

While in Scotland at age 10, Wendy kept a sketch book of images around Glasgow, including views from tenament building windows and a portrait of her step-grandfather. Although she took art in Secondary school and was selected to do extra art activites due to her artistic skill, she didn’t persue art after 2nd year. Her art teacher was too rigid and didn’t allow enough creativity, even demanding she use certain colors she didn’t like, so Wendy chose not to spend most of the day with her. Also, at that time Wendy planned on becoming a veterinarian, so needed to take science courses.

After moving back to the United States at age 15, Wendy had already done most of what was being taught in high school, so graduated early and started college at 16. After a year of science and math courses, she decided that she had no interest in obtaining a degree in biology and worked for a year or two.

Although Wendy’s father encouraged her to go to university for engineering, she decide to go back and persue something that really interested her: Art. Since she hadn’t taken art courses in high school, she took a Portfolio Development class at Villa Maria College and then applied to the Fine Art department, since she had found something she really loved.

While working on her first oil painting in a first year painting course, other students thought she was joking when Wendy said it was the first time she’d painted in oils. Mixing color became one of her strengths as an artist and she loved painting, particularly using oil on canvas. She had her work exhibited in all the students shows and artwork published in college publications. After graduating with honours and earning her A.S. degree at Villa Maria, she went on to the University of New York at Buffalo to persue her B.F.A., majoring in Painting.

Wendy’s artwork became more abstract, including marine and driftwood imagery. Then she began using disected fruit in her imagery, enlarging and abstracting the forms and colours. She participated in serveral art exhibits during this time and was awarded the Morrison Scholarship for Artistic Excellence. After obtaining her B.F.A. , she decided to become certified to teach and enrolled in the Certification Only program at the State University College on NY at Buffalo.

Wendy taught art at all levels from Kindergarten through High School, and started working on her Master’s degree while teaching in the Lancaster Central School District. It was during this time her son was born. Much of her artwork at this time reflected aspects of motherhood and the environment from his viewpoint.

She had several art exhibits while her son was young and received honorable mention for “Upton Rooftop” at a Women’s Art Exhibit in Buffalo, which was quite an accomplishment considering the calabor and experience of most of the female artists in this show.

Two years after Wendy’s son was born, her older daughter was born. During this time, her main focus was on teaching and raising her young children, but she was always an artist in her class room, creating along with her students.

Three years later, when pregnant with her youngest daughter, she decided that she really needed to be home with her young children. So Wendy started working from home. She started teaching from her basement studio. She also started an internet marketing business so she could replace the lost income of teaching full time in the public schools.

When her son started Kindergarten, he was already reading and was losing his enthusiasm for learning, since he already knew what was being taught in school. At that point, Wendy started homeschooling. She started teaching art to homeschooled children, as well as holding after-school art classes for public school children.

It was fortunate that she had built up her internet marketing business while teaching, since she was able to support her three children and continue to homeschool them after her separation and divorce. Also, the skills she learned in marketing on the internet became valuable later in promoting her art and art related material later.

In 2009, Wendy met a wonderful Canadian man who she married at the end of 2010 and started the process of immigrating to Canada. She and her three children became permanent residents in Canada in 2011. It was during this time, that Wendy started devoting more time to creating her own artwork and began writing her art lesson book, Art FUNdamentals.

Wendy has started to get involved in the art community in the Niagara region of Ontario and is now in the process of setting up her studio on their 8 acre hobby farm. She is a member of the Fort Erie Arts Council and the Niagara Artists Centre in St. Catharines. Wendy will be publishing images of her newest artwork and exhibit locations and dates here on her website.